If the Name Fits...

Names. I'm obsessed with them. I love to look through baby books for unusual or unpronouncable names, and imagine the characters they might fit. Most of the time, my characters are made by the name I choose for them--I can't develop them, know what they look like, know their backstory or any other  important piece of  information until I know their name. Needless to say, I'm not the author with a whole document filled with unnamed characters. I'm the one with a whole document filled with uncharactered names (if that didn't make sense, blame the gophers under your shed =P)

I was really excited to get a blog, not only because it's just plain AWESOME, but also because there's that lovely little box that pops up when you go to post a comment. It has a random, computer-jumbled word which soon becomes the highlight of my day, especially if it sounds cute when you say it (I guess I'm also obsessed with cute characters). I have a huge list of these random words, just waiting for me to scroll through and create a new character from one of them.

Another thing I do for unique names is to either spell a word backwards, or spell it backwards and jumble the letters. Look: I see the "Save Now" button. I take Save, and flip it to Evas. It's pretty, no? =D "Now" is Won, which, unfortunately, is already a word and would make a pretty weird name. But you get the picture =P I do this all the time--I write 'em down in a little book in my purse.  I flip car names, people's names, store names, food names, ANY names at all. It's quite fun. Sometimes it doesn't work quite right--take my name for example. Elisabeth goes to Htebasile. I mean, it sounds like someone sneezed! I kinda omitted the Hte part and got Basile, which I say wrong to make it sound more exotic. I flipped Fozzy's name, too, and got a pretty cool name out of it when I took out a couple of letters here and there.

And, lastly, I surf the web for names. I look for names from different countries, or different variations of familiar names (like Elisabeth has gazillions of variations =D). And, if a name's not quite right, I just rearrange some letters and make it work. It's a hobby, I think.

Some of the problems I have with relying heavily on names is that I find I get a lot of names that are too similar. For example, I am naturally drawn to names that start with A. I don't know why. A names just sound so lovely. I also love Ae names, I names, and names that involve Z's. Once I started a book, and before I'd gotten to the second chapter half of my characters had short names beginning with A's. It was not a pretty sight when I realized it. This Blogger comment-box is really helping me to mix up my name list and pick out some crazy new names that I'd never have been able to think of had I mixed letters 'til I was blue in the face!

Lastly, I sometimes find names in classic books. Twink's name came from The Yearling. In that book, Twink was a girl. My Twink has never forgiven me for that. I know that Fozzy got one of her character's names from To Kill a Mockingbird. That character showed up once, but he had a very interesting name and I only wish I'd found it before she did XD The Bible's also a good place to look--especially the Old Testament. There are PAGES of old names, most of them quite unique and VERY hard to pronounce =D



So, how do you find names? Does the character make the name, or does the name make the character? Are your characters' names unique, or do you find that you, too, have characters with names which look or sound too similar?

'Nother exercise will be coming up soon!

God Bless!

~Elisabeth (or Htebasile, if you must)